The Los Angeles City Council held its regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday, April 9, 2025, at approximately 9:29 AM. The meeting addressed a range of items including approval of minutes, resolutions, closed session settlements, and several public hearings. The major item of the day was the proposed modernization and expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center (Item 13), which resulted in extensive public comment and council debate before approval with amendments.
Hello everyone, I'm Natalia Bilbao, and here's what's happening in LA this week. Although it was delayed by the wildfires, the annual Golden Dragon Parade in Chinatown got underway. Well, this lunar year of the snake is about resiliency and change. Some things like community getting together remain a constant. Today we are here in a very historic and beloved neighborhood in Council District 1, Chinatown, celebrating the 126th Golden Dragon Parade organized by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles. Today's a perfect example of what it looks like when community comes together. We have legislators from all levels of government here. We have community organizations, people who do dance and different arts and crafts coming together to provide a beautiful parade for the community. So the meetup together, Chinatown with a dogs is a pretty engagement. What it does is it brings everybody in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County together to celebrate one of the many rich cultures that we have here. The Chinese New Year this year is specifically talking about resiliency, for example. And resiliency is what the city of Los Angeles, the county of Los Angeles needs right now. Because of how horrifically the year started with us with the natural disaster that we experience. As a matter of fact, that's why they were kind enough to put this event off so that we can still try to recover from that. But collectively, whether it's law enforcement, government, our community, we're gonna need each other as we move forward. We're celebrating the year of the snake, which is strong, resilient, compassionate, and we want to give a big hello to everybody. So thank you, Los Angeles, thank you, Chinatown, and let's have a good time. Happy Moon and New Year to everybody. We want to make sure that everybody respects every community, every culture, every language, every food. That's who we are in Los Angeles. That's what the parade is about. And it had to be delayed temporarily. But the wildfires are a good example of how we bag each other up, how we help each other. That's what today is all about. Young Hey Fat Choi, happy new year to all the members of our community. Make sure that if you haven't to come by Chinatown, come by from those local businesses, come and enjoy this space. Price gouging is a concept that came about after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. You may remember during COVID that happened for a while with masks and medical equipment that people needed. So our state legislature passed a criminal statute. So price gouging is an effort to profit off disaster or someone else's tragedy by raising the cost of necessities by more than 10%. And it's a crime. If you're thinking that you can make extra money by raising your prices while supply is scarce during this emergency, think again. It applies to rent under the state housing law, to food, to repairs, to construction, to emergency and medical supplies, to gas, to storage facilities, to hotels and motels, and to any other kind of lodging or shelter for people or their pets or their children. So don't raise prices by more than 10%, is the short message. It's really preying on people with your most vulnerable. It's not a victimless crime. It's the kind of behavior that is the antithesis of what we as Angelino showed we were in the wake of these fires. Most of us pulled together. Most of us were there helping each other. So for those few who are out there violating the penal code and trying to make a profit at the expense of people who just lost everything. My office is here to tell you you're not gonna get away with it. If you experience prize gouging, you can report it to the city attorney through the My LA 311 app. Who knew that jujitsu could offer so much to healthcare professionals and our LAPD? This self-defense system and martial art uses leverage and positioning rather than size or strength. And it's become an effective tool for law enforcement. Take a look. What's going on today is the safe wrap system. We brought Henner and Heedon Gracie from Grayson University to uh teach our in-service instructors and outside agencies and our civilian medical staff, the safe wrap technique that they've been teaching for over a year now. I like this one to try practice with. It also gives Burrato something to hold on to, as we're saying to support some of these own weak.